Verona: Romeo and Juliet

So as you may of noticed it has now been about two weeks since my last blog post. I did not die or fall of the face of the planet I have just been buried under long reading lists and various homework assignments that are all too common for the typical grad student. I am sure you are devastated that I did not take the time to blog about the finer points of Classical Realism and Liberal Institutionalism.

Today I took a mental health day and went to the town of Verona, Italy. This town is where it is believed the original Romeo and Juliet story originated. One is able to visit the balcony of Juliet or the tomb of the ill fated lovers.

In addition to the towns famous lovers, the town proves to be an excellent medieval town with a great many different sights, churches, piazzas, and other attractions. Enjoy the pictures blow.

Gate Entering Verona

Main Square

Me with a Roman Theater in the Background

This is Juliet's world famous balcony

This is the millions of love notes people leave by Juliet's home....gross (but I guess enough people think it is sweet because they do it)

Parma

So today, two friends and I decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of Bologna life, so we took a day trip to Parma. World renown for Parmesan cheese and other eating delights, we made sure to indulge in their culinary genius as well as taking some time to just wander the town and take in the different sights. Below are some of the pictures from the day.

Duomo in Parma

The inside of the Duomo

Battistero

Colorful buildings

Chiesa Di San Giovanni Evangelista

Inside

Park & Palazzo Ducale

السلام عليكم

As-Salāmu `Alaykum (السلام عليكم) - Peace be upon you. Well today I had my first Arabic class, and I must say it was both exciting and daunting. Above is basically the only phrase in Arabic I learned. The rest of the class time was devoted to learning the Arabic Alphabet, which as you probably know is completely different from the standard alphabets used by the romance languages. Arabic is also written and read right to left, and I feel it is a good metaphor for learning Arabic; forget what you have learned and learn an entirely new mindset! Should be exciting!

Arabic Alphabet

TWINS WIN! (and I watched it in Italy)

Well it is currently about 4:00 am here in Italy, and being the fanatic sports fan that I am, I stayed up all night watching the Minnesota Twins win game 163! The game started at 11:00 pm here in Italy, and I figured it would not go past 2:00 am....but then baseball has a funny habit of not going according to plan.

It really is amazing the strides that technology has made over the years. The fact that I am able to watch a live stream of my local hometown baseball team here in Italy (via P2P) is really Cool!

Now it is time to get some sleep...if I can...I am still really excited!

Ultimate Survival Italian Part II

So this past weekend I played in an Ultimate tournament not far from Bologna. I ended up playing with a team from Trent, Italy. A bunch of their players had not been able to come down to the tournament, so I joined their team. The good news was since there very few of us I got to play a lot! The bad news was after 5 games in the span of 6 hours my body killed!

The Team

Still I had a great time. Several of the players spoke some English, but they mostly just spoke in Italian and I began to catch onto the different Italian Ultimate terms. In the end we finished 7th out of 9 teams.

I may play in another tournament this coming weekend and I also just joined a choir at the University of Bologna with a fellow student from Johns Hopkins SAIS. Both should be fun and continue to improve my Italian!

Biking Italy: Modanella (i.e. FERRARI!)

So today I decided to go for another bike trip. I choose for my destination the small town of Modanella Italy. The town is internationally famous because this guy Enzo Ferrari started some small car company there and named it after himself (perhaps you have heard of this company!?).

At any rate the bike ride was through some beautiful country side areas of Italy, and I managed to get lost a bunch of time and tried to make up a bunch of different detours. The end result was I probably biked around 55 km instead of the 45 it should of taken to get there. Still the effort was well worth it. The Ferrari Galleria was awesome, a true Mecca for car enthusiasts and still worth the trip even if you are not a fanatic. Check out the pictures below to get a idea of what it was like.

One of the first Ferrari Racing Cars

2008 Version of the F1 Ferrari Racing Vehicle

Basically what this picture is showing is that Ferrari Dominates the F1 Grand Prix Circuits all over the world...

Classic Maserati

Newer "pedestrian" Ferrari

The engines are just phenomenal

Ultimate Ferrari Room!

What follows is a video of one of the coolest rooms ever! Every person walked in and a huge smile would just appear on their faces (Ferrari even added mood music for the room!)

Still picture of the amazing room

And of course....this will be my future car!

I talked to some people from Australia at the Museum and turns out you can rent a Ferrari to test drive in Modanella! The Aussies did and said they drove absolutely spectacularly (one would sure hope so for their price tag), well like any good young male I had to check this out for my self! I was not too surprised though when I found that the price tag for a 10 minute drive was around $100. Needless to say after that I got on my bike and rode off into the sunset (as several Ferraris hummed by me!).

Carl of Arabia!

Ok, so now I know what you are thinking....what the heck could I have in common with the epic character (and real life counterpart) of one of the all time great cinematic films (and probably the record for longest film ever too!). Well as of yet, not much. While I have always longed to roam the land fighting for freedom and philosophizing about the meaning of life, I just have not gotten around to it yet.

What I am about to begin though is taking Arabic here at Johns Hopkins SAIS! In addition it has been common for Arabic students to spend their summer inbetween their two years in a Arabic speaking country. So perhaps in time I will have a few charectorists similar to the all time film great.